When a receiver demodulates a higher order modulation symbol such as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-16 or QAM-64, it typically needs a magnitude reference parameter in order to determine the regions for slicing. Typically, this magnitude reference parameter is provided by a pilot signal as well as some additional messages when there is a known offset between the powers of the pilot symbol and the data symbol. In Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks, the magnitude parameter is signaled to each user equipment (UE) via a Layer 3 radio resource control (RRC) message referred to as the Pa parameter. This message consumes valuable bandwidth, and may cause a delay.